I argue that a country’s preferences in an international trade negotiation ultimately reflect the domestic distribution of power across economic sectors not only in the field of the market, but also in the field of society. Fields correspond to arenas of power. Whereas in the market societal actors have economic capital (EC), their position in society determines their identity capital (IC). The more a sector is associated to the dominant conception of national identity, the higher is its IC. Both types of capital impact a sector’s political power (PP). IC manifests itself in the phase of ratification either instrumentally, when in dispute in the political field, or structurally, if embedded in state institutions. Hence, when IC is instrumentalised, only if the coalition in government espouses a social paradigm to which a sector is mostly associated it will be able to convert its level of IC into PP. As ratification shadows negotiation, constraints in this latter phase tend to be false positives in explaining the formation of the national interest. The hypothesis on the role of IC in shaping the weight of sectors’ preferences in trade negotiations is tested along with a process of theory-building through a multi-method structured-focused comparison. For the comparison, two countries were chosen as their societies are diverse in terms of identity, yet each represents a variety of the effects of IC. Brazil and India have identity-based social cleavages that are expressed in structural and instrumental terms respectively. They are key players in the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) multilateral system of trade, having participated of the Doha Development Round of trade liberalisation. Brazil expressed interest for liberalisation as the mostly racially-diverse sectors had offensive demands. In turn, protectionist demands prevailed in India, as defensive sectors are associated to the dominant secularist paradigm of national identity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:669824 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Rodrigues Vieira, Vinícius Guilherme |
| Contributors | Hurrell, Andrew |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0157e2e9-68bd-4e2a-9f62-9fe10a8576b4 |
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